Donna Corcoran and Kellie Piekutowski recently attended the Midwest Educational Technology Committee conference in St. Charles, Missouri, and wanted to share some takeaways. Feel free to follow-up with us if you have questions or ideas. Also, visit this Google folder, where we copied some of the presentations from the sessions we attended. You can view most of the presentations for all of the sessions on the METC website.

​2. Make Your Class More Introvert Friendly — a plethora of tips from Julie Smith, an extrovert professor, wife, and mother of introverts.

Use Twitter IN the classroom as a backchannel, allowing all to have an equal “voice” without having to share; make it a SILENT response time. Use TwitterFall to have responses post as they come in, without having to follow each other.

Use Flipgrid to post a question that everyone must answer. Students can’t see responses until they post their own.

Link Remind and Padlet. Send a Remind message with a link to a Padlet idea generator (what’s your favorite commercial and why?); students respond before class, and thus are engaged even before class begins.

3. Require students to use blank slides for their Google Slides — no templates allowed. This encourages them to be thoughtful about each and every word and/or image they insert onto a slide, and gives them more creative freedom to make decisions about color scheme, typefaces, fonts, etc. Learn more about teaching students to be thoughtful designers.​

4. QuizzIzz — like Kahoot BUT each student moves through the questions at his/her own pace. Results are competitive, but the time pressure is removed, which is helpful for many students. And, yes, it’s free!

5. Tip for improving your research assignments: When you are writing research questions for your assignments, Google the question. Is finding the answer a simple matter of copy and paste for students? If yes, then maybe we need to stretch their thinking with a more complex question, one that requires them to synthesize sources to generate a response.

6. Voxer- allows students to reach teacher by voice or text, without having the teacher’s cell phone number. It also can be used by students in a team setting. The tool is great for collaborating while keeping personal contact information just that — private!​

​7. EdPuzzle - Wow! Add interactivity (voice overs, quiz questions, etc.) to videos that you find on YouTube, etc. or to videos that you create yourself. EdPuzzle also provides helpful data so you can see how well students performed on the quiz, the parts of the video that they rewatched most frequently, etc. Many other tools make incorporating video into your classes simple. ​

8. Digital Storytelling — Voice, sound, music, photographs and text. Everyone has a powerful story to share. Providing students with a variety of options increases engagement and creativity. Example applications include WeVideo, Animoto, MS Photostory, SchoolTube, and more.

9. From “Teach Like a Pirate” presentation by Dave Burgess (@burgessdave): Offer your students experiences, not lessons. Use props, get students out of their seats, make them curious... Does it take time and energy to develop these creative hooks? Yes. But, as Burgess demonstrated, the results are worth it.

10. Networking — So very grateful to have had the opportunity to meet (and follow) a number of innovative, creative, enthusiastic educators. Getting to know these individuals — to connect and collaborate, as educators and with our students — will continue to pay ongoing dividends.​​